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A fan podcast celebrating (mostly Swedish) RPGs including, but not limited to: Coriolis; Forbidden Lands; Symbaroum; Tales from the Loop; and, Alien.
Hello and welcome to episode 271 of Effect. Let's moon them. I'm Dave.
Matthew:And for the second time today, I'm Matthew.
Dave:I wasn't gonna say that.
Matthew:So you're you're guessing You're gonna embarrass me, will you? I'm very generous.
Dave:I know. I'm such a nice guy, but thanks to Matthew and his microphone and his cables, here we are today.
Matthew:Where where the fault is.
Dave:Right. Okay. Thanks to Matthew then. We are doing this for the second time today. Whoo.
Dave:So it's not Sunday morning. It's Sunday afternoon.
Matthew:Is. And we are well rehearsed.
Dave:So this
Matthew:will go remarkably smoothly.
Dave:Yeah. Okay. Before we kick off, everyone, I just wanted to mark a sad moment and invite you to look at your Tales of the Old West books and go to page 271, if you have them. If you if you don't if you don't have a copy, get a copy, and then go to page 271. So on that page is a lovely bit of artwork by our great artist Thomas Elliot of of my dog Diggy.
Dave:And I just wanted to mark the fact that she left us this week. So I just want to say goodbye, Diggs, and mark a moment of remembrance. So have a look. Have a smile. She was a great, great dog, and I shall miss her very much.
Dave:Anyway
Matthew:Obviously, it makes me very sad
Dave:I'll be alright.
Matthew:To hear that.
Dave:I'll be alright now.
Matthew:I know. All my love to you and Judy.
Dave:Thank you for indulging me, everybody, for that moment. Let's rattle through the shit we talked about earlier and get it over with, shall we?
Matthew:Yes. Let's see what we can remember about what we talked about earlier.
Dave:Yes.
Matthew:So, yeah, we have got a tight and well rehearsed programme for you in this particular where time to get
Dave:And very
Matthew:then we've got what may in our previous attempt, turned out to be quite a long conversation after a essay from you about playing Tales of the Old West in the new verse, converting tales of the old West to the firefly universe. Indeed. And and we'll we'll try and rehearse those arguments. It was quite a spirited argument, wasn't it, actually?
Dave:Well, it was a good conversation, I thought. Yeah? You raised some interesting points. You raised some points that were basically complaining but actually I've made pretty much the same point. But yeah, that's cool.
Dave:It's good. Yeah.
Matthew:I'm pretty sure I proved you wrong on more than one occasion.
Dave:Don't think you proved me wrong on any of it, frankly. It was a it was a lively debate.
Matthew:Right. Shall we though? First of all.
Dave:Yeah. Let's spend the whole of this episode going on about how great the previous recording was. Then this one this one's gonna be really shit.
Matthew:Give everybody your FOMO. But no. This one will do a lot less talking over each other because we know what each other's about to say. I think that's already happened.
Dave:Unlikely, I'd suggest. Yeah.
Matthew:And a lot less waffle and a lot less a lot fewer distractions and deviations down onto the excellent podcast, for example, that I heard with Nathan Fillion and Annalyn Tudyk. But we'll we'll come back to that in a bit. I am gonna say now though, it is at three minutes forty seven seconds in time for the world of gaming.
Dave:Yes. Right. Okay. Well, the first thing on the list is Twilight Sword. It's up on it's up on back a kit from Free League and Two Little Mice, another a collaboration between them.
Dave:I think we talked a bit about this before, didn't we? And
Matthew:Well, we did, but we have to well, we talked about it in a previous episode. No. I mean,
Dave:on a previous episode. No. No. I'm not I'm not gonna say everything we talked about this before, so we won't talk about it now. Meaning that we talked about it this morning.
Dave:Now, that wasn't what I was saying. I was saying that we talked about it on a previous episode that we did manage to record and broadcast.
Matthew:But some of the new things we discovered obviously, a fantasy game. It's a different system to either the Zero engine or the kind of house system of two little mice. It uses all the dice, you know, all the shapes of dice. We were particularly taken though by the four sided dice.
Dave:Yes. Yeah. Very very nice design of the four of the d four, which is actually a d eight, but four of the sides are really tiny and truncated, so you effectively roll on one of four sides. And it looks it looks very good. A very nice idea.
Dave:And easier to pick up than a standard d four. Not so good for using to stop your enemies
Matthew:As peltops.
Dave:Stop your enemies from chasing you down narrow alleyways when you throw them behind and have them tread on them.
Matthew:Indeed. Although the longer numbered sides do look like they could make quite a useful way of stabbing somebody in the neck.
Dave:I'm I'm I'm I'm glad you went straight to that use. Yeah. Yeah. No. No.
Dave:That's really nice little design. Nice little dice set they've got with it. One thing that they do have, which unfortunately, I think is probably too late if you haven't backed it already, is there's a lovely little enamel pin, which is a crowdfunding exclusive of of the sword from presumably it's the twilight sword, I suspect. It looks lovely. If you back this in the first seventy two hours, which I suspect have now passed by now, unfortunately, because it's twenty five days left.
Matthew:I think they launched it on Tuesday, so sadly,
Dave:some the Yeah. Thirty hours may work We'll be too late. But that looks that looks really cool. I like the look at that. But, yeah, we talked a bit about the I should stop saying that.
Dave:Can you delete that bit out when I said we talked a bit about
Matthew:I'm not
Dave:because that because
Matthew:I've got less time for editing than I had this morning. Because that
Dave:was because that was referring to this morning's conversation. So yeah, the book design and the the book shape is is slightly unusual. It's not your standard US letter format. No, it's narrower, taller style. I don't know what the style would be called.
Dave:I mean, you are the expert.
Matthew:No. Of course, we did talk about these. And I I said I couldn't remember what it was called. And given that we're recording again, you'd have thought I might have taken a few moments to look it up so that I can sound knowledgeable. However, in the spirit of this being sounding like it was the first time we recorded it, I purposely didn't remember what the format was.
Matthew:It is though, as I said, it's it's a format I briefly considered for Tales of the Old West. But you really wanted a letter pa letter sized
Dave:A good old standard. Yeah. Exactly.
Matthew:Hardback that looked like a proper role playing game. Absolutely. And and that's what we went for. And in the end, you know, with 300 pages, I think that was probably a good idea.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:I worry with this format in the hardback style or paperback if there was one, but in in this is a hardback, but with a spine, with a bound spine, it won't be very good at staying open on the table if you are that sort of GM that likes to have Yeah. A double page spread open.
Dave:I mean, even even, you know, a lot of US letter size books don't stay open terribly well, particularly if you're on the early or the late pages in the book. Yeah. So, yeah, that might be a it might be a challenge. It does look lovely though, I have to say. It does look really nice.
Dave:It's not the kind of game that I'm gonna back.
Matthew:No. I think it's neither of our sort of fantasy, is it? But it has got a considerable number of backers already.
Dave:It does. It's doing very well so far. €410,000 at the point of of recording.
Matthew:Against a target of just €10,000.
Dave:Yeah. Exactly. Nearly 3,000 backers with twenty five days to go. So it's doing really well. Yeah.
Dave:And and lots of luck to them.
Matthew:Yes. Lots of luck to them. And I noticed that well, I don't know. Actually, after our earlier recording, noticed Mohammed asking whether anybody was gonna back it Yeah. On our Discord.
Matthew:Nicest place on the Internet. Exclusive Patreon benefit. And I said no, as we discussed on the episode we just recorded. And then I listened to the episode we just recorded and
Dave:Realized you hadn't recorded half of it.
Matthew:And said, or failed to record much of it. Yeah. So Yeah. So what you and I aren't gonna back it, but I might back the next game. Maybe.
Matthew:I'm Okay. I'm more inclined to. I I Okay. Yeah. What I am resolved to do, actually, is to download the quick start for the next game that comes up.
Dave:And that and that is?
Matthew:That is
Dave:Let's let's tell people. Let's not hide the lead here.
Matthew:No. No. No. Let's keep it a secret and make them guess. The clues are it's based on fortune It it is
Dave:Ghost in the Shell royal royal playing game. Ghost in the Shell Arise. Ghost in the Shell Arise. So the for for those people who are now scratching their head wondering why we're calling it arse, on our earlier recording, when you when you when you catch the title out of the corner of your eye, the word arise at the end just looks to me like arse. And so I made that comment, and we joked about it, and and now you can't stop seeing it looking like arse.
Matthew:No. Exactly.
Dave:But it is arise. Ghost in the Shell arise. So, yeah, this this is based on a old sort of nineties anime movie, I understand.
Matthew:Yes. Now you, of course, are the expert on anime amine amine. Amine. Amine. It.
Matthew:You'd have thought we'd have rehearsed this, wouldn't you?
Dave:Should we just give up today, mate? I mean, this is gonna be, like, one of the most weird and disorganised episodes we've ever done.
Matthew:It shouldn't be. It should be really organised out. It it is a, as you say, based on a Japanese anime movie from I can't remember whether it's '95 or '94, but around that period of time. And you're not an expert at all in anime,
Dave:are you? Next to nothing about anime. Yeah.
Matthew:Your son, Dean, is quite a fan.
Dave:He is an expert. Yeah.
Matthew:And I'm kind of surprised he's never made you watch this actually, because I think if I was going I I'm not a huge anime fan, but if somebody said to me, or if you said to me, Dave, what's what's the first anime movie I should watch? Then this would be at the top of a very short list. Yeah. So it's it's quite a coherent cyberpunky style setting. Some great action sequences.
Matthew:Some really nice techniques in animation. So there's lots of sort of change of focus and stuff like that. It's quite quite sophisticated.
Dave:Yeah Dean does continually try to get me to watch certain things and some of them that that he he really recommends. And I'm not opposed to it. I mean, I'm I'm I'm open to the idea. It's just finding the time to do it. I haven't got around to it yet.
Matthew:Now one of the reasons why I'm intrigued about this one and will download the quick start is it is not just slapping a well known IP onto five e Yeah. And pushing it out of the door. This is a game where they have chosen to use the what's become the Forged in the Dark system, is to say based on Blades in
Dave:the Dark.
Matthew:Now I'm kind of intrigued by that because obviously I've played that and it works really well as a caper game. And I'm not sure that the plot of Ghost in the Shell is quite a caper, but I'm willing to be convinced. And one of the reasons that they have chosen to use Forged in the Dark actually isn't Blades in the Dark but Band of Blades, which is the, what would you call it, kind of two scale role playing, where you're playing the officers commanding the HQ in this
Dave:particular case. Kind of the level above, isn't it, really?
Matthew:Yeah. Then also
Dave:actors are blazing the dark.
Matthew:Operational teams. Yeah. So so that that might work quite well because that there is a bit of that in in Ghost in the Shell in that in that genre. So I think it's well worth at least a download of the quick start and
Dave:It it will be worth looks good. I say, you know, the artwork's nice. The design of it looks really nice. I say it's probably again, it's not something I'm gonna be rushing off to back. But again, it's doing very well to 2,400 backers nearly nearly 300,000 pounds of it.
Dave:Eight eight and a half thousand pound goal. Only four days to go. So if you're interested in this and you are hearing this this show, soon after we put it out November, you don't have long to go. So crack on and go and have a look at it on Kickstarter if you're interested. So that will run out on Thursday the November the twenty seventh.
Dave:It looks lovely, but I won't be backing it. It's not it's not my not my shtick really.
Matthew:Yeah. Not not not your thing and you don't know Ghost in the Shell so why would you? But I would recommend you get Dean to sit down with you and to watch Ghost in the Shell.
Dave:Okay. I will mention that to him when I see him.
Matthew:Right. So what's next in the world of gaming?
Dave:We are
Matthew:Dragon Meet.
Dave:To be at Dragon Meet. Yeah. As of next weekend. Looking forward to that. We we are representing Free League and obviously ourselves as Effect Publishing, so that would be great.
Dave:Our stands are adjacent to one another, so that's gonna be really cool. Yeah, really looking forward to it. It'd be interesting. First Dragon meet at the Excel in Docklands and then we have that's a you know we've been there for conventions before. We did Comic Con there.
Dave:Did Salute there last year. It's a good venue. It's a nice it's a it's a decent venue. It does lose the homely, cosy feel that we always had at the Nobertell Hammersmith where Dragons had been set before, which is a pity because that was that was really nice. And particularly for those of us who were lucky enough to stay in the same hotel as the convention, you met people in the bar, people didn't all disappear off to their own hotels and all the rest of it.
Dave:So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a sad day, think, but I can totally understand why why John Dodd who's now runs Dragonmeat completely, having bought Modiphius out from their share. I can totally understand why they've gone to the Excel. It's a bigger location. You can get more people and more room to grow. And, hopefully, Dragonmeat will go on from from strength to strength.
Matthew:Yeah. And there's a a great interview with John Todd in last month's or this month's issue of Tabletop Gaming Magazine Yep. Which has also got some interesting reviews that I recommend people read. So rush out before they take it off the shelves and get issue 108 of Tabletop Gaming Magazine. Check it out.
Matthew:I think you'll be pleasantly entertained.
Dave:Yes. We certainly were.
Matthew:Yes. Say no more about that. And the thing that I'm gonna miss, and here we cut to the two minutes of our previous recording that actually did get my voice on it.
Dave:Okay. You're gonna cut that cut that bit in, are you?
Matthew:Yeah. Well, no. We're not. I I think we'll we'll do it. I'll say it again Okay.
Matthew:For the benefit of the audience. I'm gonna the as you pointed out, Excel is kind of easier to get to on public transport. It has its own station on the Docklands Light Railway, which isn't called isn't called XL, but
Dave:Royal Albert. Royal
Matthew:Albert. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's so it's very easy to get to. But, of course, it is in a bit of an island of new development and that new development is mostly the kind of warehouse shaped buildings that they build, they put conventions in.
Matthew:So that doesn't have that community around it that Hammersmith was. And we're going to have to that's gonna be interesting. So, you know, ten minutes walk away from the Novotel was any shop or any type of food that you might want to eat Yeah. Within reason. And pubs.
Matthew:And we of course loved to go to Latimer's which is a pub about ten minutes walk away obviously. That was a lovely sort of real ale pub but also had delicious Thai food.
Dave:It did.
Matthew:And it's been a bit of a tradition for us to have a Saturday night Thai meal.
Dave:Yep.
Matthew:But that's not happening this time. Sadly.
Dave:No. Sadly not.
Matthew:We'll to sort that out.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:But I'm sure we'll. It will be just as good
Dave:as It'll be a good convention. And as with all these things, the most exciting, most fun part is getting to see everybody get People. That you only get to see at conventions. Frankly. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to it.
Dave:It should be a lovely it should be a lovely day or two.
Matthew:So, yes. I think that's that's well, actually, that isn't all our convention news, is it? We've also got news about the UK Games Expo convention.
Dave:We do.
Matthew:I've roped you in on a thing.
Dave:You have. Which is fine.
Matthew:For very little money. It has to be sent. For none money.
Dave:For none money.
Matthew:But we have agreed to write a an epic adventure, which will be supported with prizes from Free League and support, and it'll be one of the main events on UK Games Expo, and it will be an epic alien adventure.
Dave:Yep. For the new alien evolved rules. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah.
Dave:I'm I'm very pleased to be to be involved. Getting getting the band back together. You know? So Yeah. Hope's Hope's Last Day.
Dave:Obviously, yeah, if we launched Or
Matthew:Last Hopes, as we call it. So the very first ever paid job we did for Free League was when they launched the preorder. It wasn't even a Kickstarter for Alien. It UK Games Expo. What year was this?
Matthew:'19. Six years ago.
Dave:2019.
Matthew:2019. And we were perched on a little corner table in their very small stand
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Right at the back of the hall.
Dave:How they broke.
Matthew:We ran Little Adventures, which became the, and I quote, fan favorite, the adventure, Hope's Last Day, which is now in its own box set, which I still haven't received. So I don't know that this will have such glories thrust upon it after we've written it, but we're gonna do one especially for UK Games Expo. And I'm inclined to make it three World Empire focused so that it feels very British.
Dave:I think that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Yeah. That'll be cool. Yep. So, yeah, we've got a bit of work to do about that.
Dave:We'll get you know, I know you've got some some thoughts and ideas, and we can chat them through next weekend when we get together for Dragon Meet. Yeah. Yeah. It should be good. Looking forward to it.
Matthew:And I should and Billy, from who's one of our patrons, but also one of the organizers of UK Games Expo, I'm gonna get in touch with her and talk about deadlines for various things.
Dave:So Yeah.
Matthew:Very exciting. Very exciting. Indeed. And if you are an alien GM and a listener, then, obviously, we'll be making an or Games Expo will be making an official call for GMs at some point. But if you're wanting to reserve the space for running this excellent epic adventure along with, I don't know, up to 20 other GMs, then then you wanna leave Friday night free.
Matthew:Mhmm. Yeah. Friday evening free. It's not gonna go on all night, but it will go on possibly until midnight.
Dave:Cool.
Matthew:I think in their timing. Yeah. So I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna I'm gonna be in bed by half past nine, but we'll we'll see. We'll we'll deal with that when it comes.
Matthew:I think then that is all the news from the world of gaming.
Dave:Think it is.
Matthew:And we've done it really efficiently compared to last time.
Dave:It was so much better last time, you know. Anyway. Right. Let's so the the feature for today was was my little piece on converting tales of the Old West into tales tales of the new verse. As regular listeners will have gathered, Matthew and I are huge fans of Firefly and Serenity.
Dave:I have Matt to thank for putting me onto Firefly back in the day, a favor that I've then paid forward as often as I can by spreading the word and getting others into Firefly in the same vein. It's not just the setting and the ideas behind Firefly that make it great. The writing and direction was superb, Joss Whedon's subsequent controversies notwithstanding. The cast were perfect, and the characters they brought to life felt real and alive. It still stands the test of time and for me there is no better science fiction TV series.
Dave:I've not really pondered upon this before but I suspect that much of my love of Firefly comes from my enduring passion for the Old West, and that much of my contemporary love of the Old West comes from my admiration of Firefly. There must inevitably have been some influences from Firefly in the creative magic that resulted in tales of the Old West, And for me, that makes Tales of the Old West the perfect base to create a Firefly role playing game or the Tales of the New Verse. I'm going to talk a bit about how the themes mesh and then say a few things about how practically the foundations of Tales of the Old West could be built upon to make that game. So themes. Number one, survival on the fringe.
Dave:Both Firefly and Tales of the Old West are set on the outskirts of civilization, highlighting life in dusty frontier towns and neglected border worlds. Struggling to make ends meet, the crew embodies the fight for dignity in harsh circumstances. Two, freedom versus authority. The central tension of Firefly pits the independent minded crew of Serenity and especially Mal against the centralized power of the alliance. Both the show and the game explore the cost of making your own way in life and the moral trade offs of living free on the margins.
Dave:Three, moral ambiguity. Both Firefly and Tales of the Old West avoid clear cut heroes and villains. Characters make difficult choices in ethically murky situations, emphasizing pragmatism over idealism, usually. Even the obvious bad guys aren't purely evil, and even the alliance is sometimes well intentioned if oppressive. Four, personal bonds.
Dave:The Firefly crew isn't bonded by blood but by choice. Much of the show's emotional weight comes from watching a group of damaged, mismatched individuals form a loyal, protective family, and the same applies to tales of the Old West. Five hopes dreams trauma and healing. The characters all have hopes and dreams big dreams in tales of the Old West and many carry trauma they are striving to overcome. Mal's war experiences, Rivers experimentation, Zoe's losses.
Dave:Six, identity and belonging. Many characters are searching for their purpose or a place to fit in. Their journeys explore what it means to choose one's path and the price they may have to pay in making that choice. Seven frontier mythology. Both tales of the Old West and firefly are steeped in frontier imagery all about colonial expansion, settlement, lawlessness, and myth of the independent pioneer.
Dave:And eight, thrilling heroics. We mustn't forget that. Right then. How do we go about making the new verse? Some rules from tales of the Old West will fit right in off the bat.
Dave:Faith is a perfect example. As you know, faith entails doesn't necessarily mean religious faith, and this fits Mal's view that belief is a long wait for a train don't come. But Mal has faith in his crew and his drive to protect them. A perfect articulation of how faith can and should work in both games. Big dreams will work perfectly in the new verse.
Dave:Simon's big dream is to find a place where River can live in peace and safety. Caeli's might be to win Simon's heart, and Mal's is to keep flying. The town rules we have in tales of the Old West would work really well for havens in the new verse. There might be a few tweaks needed to offer other haven options perhaps, such as a space station or other more sci fi style of hiding place. But the beauty of Firefly is that western vibe and you'd find more havens like Shepherd's Book Haven from Serenity, a dusty Old West outpost or settlement on a frontier planet, than high-tech stations and the like.
Dave:So the town rules should work pretty well with little amendment. Some rules will fit, but will need tweaking. Weapons and conflict. I'd keep the western feel and advantages and disadvantages of single, double, lever, and breech action guns, but would need to expand the rules to cover things like burst fire and auto fire. Burst fire could use a rule similar to that of fanning, but I'd probably want to keep fanning as it is.
Dave:However, fire flight is rarely about automatic guns blazing away the whole time, so these fire modes mustn't be too powerful. I'd also want to keep the weapon rules quite simple while allowing someone like Jane to own a special weapon like Vera, a Callahan full bore auto like rifle. This however feels to me like it should be for role playing color and depth rather than adding a load of gunfire rules to cater for it. Tales of the Old West is not a tactical shooter game and I wouldn't want to make the new verse that either. That said it sure would be nice if we had some grenades don't you think?
Dave:But I reckon our dynamite rules can cater for that. Another aspect that might stay the same but could also be used to add another dimension are the rules for compiled rays. It makes perfect sense for characters in the new verse to have compadres in exactly the same fashion as tales of the odd West. But the firefly universe offers another idea for compadres. Those who will fulfill that role for the player characters but aren't with them at all times or might not be so trustworthy.
Dave:I'm specifically thinking of the likes of Shepard Book in Serenity when he's leading the community at Haven. Badger on Persephone. Yes he's a bit of an antagonist at first but I could see him becoming a compadre style character. I can also see Saffron becoming a compadre in the same vein as Badger. Someone that PCs have a history with who they can sometimes work with but might not always trust.
Dave:And then there's Captain Monty. I haven't yet spoken about abilities. I'd very much like to keep the abilities the same, although the descriptions for some might need to be expanded to cater for a sci fi universe. I'm thinking operate would get a lot more use than it perhaps does in tales of the Old West as this would need to cover piloting ships and other vehicles. You could argue it should cover engineering stuff too.
Dave:Book learning might be able to cover things like engineering although Kaylee didn't learn her skills through books. Making might cover engineering stuff. Perhaps leaving either book learning or insight for hacking into electronics and the cortex. As I said, we might need to change them a bit, but I'd like to manage it with as few changes as possible. And then there's talents.
Dave:I think every talent in Tails would be applicable for the new verse, but we'd, of course, need many new ones. The question would be, do we weed out or just expand? And finally, there are things we might need to add. I'd like to add something to PC generation that includes a secret or skeleton in the player character's closet. This is an ongoing element in Firefly.
Dave:Simon's secret is River and her history. River's secret is the truth of that history that not even Simon knows. Shepherd Book wasn't born a shepherd. Mal's skeleton is the trauma he carries from Serenity Valley, and so on. These don't have to be great verse shattering things but might add another colorful level of depth to player characters in the new verse.
Dave:For Firefly, we would need rules to cover readers. I'd want to keep this low key and transient. I wouldn't want traveler psionics or choreo less mystic powers. This would be something that comes and goes, gives hints and suggestions, and can look freaky to the uneducated. And add to the game without allowing an enterprising player to game the system with their reader powers.
Dave:Firefly is not about River the psychic, but about River the lost girl who is hiding more than one terrible secret. We would need some rules for protective clothing. We don't have them for PCs in tales of the Old West but do have the concept of toughness for wild animals that are hard to stop like grizzly bears and buffalo. We could expand that for the new verse, although I'd like to think I have enough creative imagination left to find a better way to manage it. And finally, and I think I've saved the best for last, ships.
Dave:We need rules for ships. This topic could be an article all by itself so I'll be brief. Serenity is a key character in Firefly. She has a history, a role and a life. We care about Serenity as much as we care about those characters who call her home.
Dave:I'd want to take the opportunity to create the ship rules I hoped we'd get in Coriolis to Third Horizon. Now don't get me wrong, I love the ships and ship rules in Coriolis, but they weren't what I was looking for when I eagerly backed the Kickstarter way back when. Your ship needs to have a history and a backstory. It needs to do what you want it to do. It needs to be able to grow as you and your story develops.
Dave:And the rules for all these need to be designed to invest the players in their ship, much as we encourage players in Tales of the Old West to be invested in their town. While the film Serenity shows the big space battle at the end with Serenity zipping about in a dogfight, Firefly doesn't have that vibe at all. Conflict between ships in space is a thing that needs to be able to happen, but I'd want the rules to be light, quick, and deadly and discourage it from happening at all. Your ship must be able to suffer trouble, so we'd need a new trouble table to cover for that. This has been a long article, and I hope you've enjoyed it to the end.
Dave:For now I'm going to conclude both the piece on ships and the essay as a whole with one of my favorite lines from Serenity. Love. You can learn all the math in the verse, but you take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as a turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down, tells you she's hurting before she keens. Makes her a home.
Matthew:So this is all very good. Actually very good Dave. But there are a number of points in which I take a different point of view. And and some, in fact, which on on thinking about it since we last spoke on this matter, some that I can be clearer about about how much I enjoy them. So let's start off with your set of themes.
Matthew:I think broadly speaking, you're correct. So you talked about survival on the fringe, freedom versus authority, moral ambiguity, personal bonds, hope, dreams, trauma, and healing. Obviously, trauma and healing are kind of aren't currently represented in tales of the Old West particularly, but but that's definitely part of the whole thing. All these all these you said were were in the in already in our game and also in the verse as it is portrayed. The one I particularly like is about identity and belonging and, the kind of the the frontier mythology, shall we call it?
Matthew:Yeah. So that's all good. That's all good. And I particularly agree with you, although it's an interesting point, isn't it? Faith and trouble seem to fit really well, not just in Tales of the Old West, but in the verse.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:It never goes smooth for Mal. Well, that's because he keeps pushing his dice. But in fact, actually, that that brings me to an interesting point. You know, Mal, as we know, lost his faith in the first five minutes of the pilot episode. Yeah.
Matthew:So we When we hit upon faith as a mechanic, we did a whole bunch of variations about how losing your faith might affect you. Yeah. I wonder whether
Dave:Yeah. I mean, for quite a while, the idea of having your faith shaken or losing your faith was going to be a mechanical element of, you know, a a of the game. And we tried many
Matthew:And it's still a mechanical element in the But
Dave:a very minor It's
Matthew:difficult to restore your faith within that session. Yeah. But but
Dave:But between sessions, you would then restore your faith. So
Matthew:Yeah.
Dave:Whereas we were we were thinking of of of of losing your faith being almost the beginning of a kind of a mini campaign arc almost. But the the the way we the various ways we try to to to articulate that in the rules, none of it seemed terribly fun. So ultimately, we decided that, you know, losing your faith becomes it it does have an impact on you in that particular session, but it becomes more of a narrative thing and more of a character story thing rather than a thing that's driven by the mechanics of the game. And that's fine and that works and that works really well. I hadn't thought of trying to introduce the idea of lost faith as a thing again in the new verse.
Dave:But as you say, Mal, the story of Mal starts with him having lost his faith. Yeah. But, you know, again interesting though, just just you know recycling the conversation that we had earlier.
Matthew:Well that's it that is what the purpose of this recording is.
Dave:Yeah entirely, entirely. Feel
Matthew:free to recycle.
Dave:Entirely. But at the beginning of at the beginning of that, is is the faith that Mal loses, is that faith religious faith? Is that whatever religious faith
Matthew:is happening? Is your yeah. That is your faith in God.
Dave:But but does he lose his faith?
Matthew:You're welcome on my boat, preacher. God, ain't it? Yeah.
Dave:But does he lose his faith that actually mechanically drives his character? So the faith in his friends, the faith in, you know, the
Matthew:found He does he does have his faith in his found family.
Dave:So actually in mechanical terms, he hasn't lost he's lost his religious faith. So you could argue then that actually the very beginning of of the first pilot episode, so energy, he's he does, he loses his faith. But then between that between that and the next episode or the next scene, he's had his between
Matthew:sessions next being episode.
Dave:And he's and he's gathered his faith in his friends, so his new faith. So actually, the the way that mechanics works in the game at the moment would work quite well for that.
Matthew:Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna challenge that a little bit. I think the way Joss Reed Whedon originally wrote or Joss and Timoneer originally wrote that first episode, I should call him mister Whedon now that he's persona non grata rather than the familiar. But I think they'd written Mal as somebody who didn't have faith and wasn't quite as fatal, because he's a very different character in that pilot than he is in the first episode of the sort of regular sized episodes. And that was one of the bits of feedback that Fox gave him that they thought he was too much of an asshole.
Matthew:Mhmm. And that he had to be softer. Yeah. So so I wonder whether there was an idea about him having an arc where he does rediscover his faith in his crew and not necessarily in god. And you still see it even, you know, even in the Serenity movie right at the end.
Matthew:Shepard, but turns around to him at some point and says, you've got to have faith in something. I don't mean god, but you've got to believe in something. Yeah. So the shepherd doesn't feel he's necessarily got his faith. Anyway, but that's an interesting thing.
Matthew:I just thought that might be an opportunity to revisit some of those other mechanics and see whether there's something that would actually really fit this, that particular situation very well.
Dave:Yeah. I think, again, we always had that aspiration and I think it was after a lot of trying that we put that aspiration to one side. So I'm
Matthew:You always had it. I never I never particularly liked it, to be honest.
Dave:But but here but here you are now saying we should have it. So you've done you've done a complete complete one eighty on on on the that.
Matthew:Well, because I think in that game, what we'd hit on wasn't you know, the various things we tried weren't fun.
Dave:Weren't working. Yeah. I I agree with that. Yeah. Maybe Yeah.
Dave:Maybe there is enough creative imagination left in this old man to try try it again one more time.
Matthew:See if he can come up
Dave:with something.
Matthew:The real challenge, I think, would be it's it's fun when you do it for an episode. So, you know, once you've lost your faith in our game, you know, you are struggling for the rest of that adventure. Yep. But it's not fun doing it for more than one episode. I found, as somebody who playtested that, I I I was just simply getting less fun.
Matthew:So the way you know, the challenge is can we take one of those mechanics and make it fun to do that? Say, I wanna play Mal with his faith problem or whatever. Yeah. And and, you know, maybe there's some other benefit you get when you but we could explore that. We could explore that.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:So that was good. You know, you talked about dreams. I argue a little bit that the semiotics of a big dream is actually very, very much old west, and there may be another terminology for it that we won't use in the verse. But my big issue my big issue, Dave, is the town rules.
Dave:Yeah. You're not surprising me, mate, because we've had this conversation already once today. So it's been like tried to make it like
Matthew:was trying to make it sound
Dave:like a surprise. Shock horror. Yo. I didn't realize that. Yeah.
Dave:No. No. And I yeah. Go on. Explain explain your your reservations.
Matthew:Okay.
Dave:Because I because I think from our conversation before, I I kind of agree with you. But go on. You explain it for the
Matthew:little bit. Yeah. And maybe I didn't explain it very well at the beginning of that. And the beauty of recording again is I can sound a lot more erudite and focused. So funny enough, we were having a bit of a discussion.
Matthew:And we're gonna return to this a bit later when we start talking about ship design. But there's a bit of a discussion in our Discord, nicest discord of the internet, Patreon exclusive, about alien ship to ship combat rules, which I don't think should be there at all. I think they're a waste of space. You will explain to me why they're not entirely a waste of space. But they're not great.
Matthew:And I'd say that the story of Alien isn't about ship to ship combat. If we were doing The Expanse, I'd expect a shit hot set of ship to ship combat rules. But in Alien, these things look like they're incredibly big, slow things that move very slowly through space. And you either get one haunted with an alien or you get sent on a mission to plan aside from there or whatever. We don't particularly yes.
Matthew:They are you know, some of them are military vessels, but they're kind of orbital nuking platforms.
Dave:Mean, I I suspect Yeah. I I suspect that the the the need to have those came from some of the wider canon that was included in the in the IP for for the game, which I think would include some of the comics, which I think do have some spaceship combat in them. So I can see why with that breadth of canon, they were obliged to do so. But I mean, I totally agree with you on that point. I I I don't think I've ever actually read the alien spaceship combat rules other than just had a glance at them.
Dave:Yeah. Because I know because I know I'm never gonna use them.
Matthew:No intention to use
Dave:them. Alien GM. No. Yeah. And they and on a glance, they didn't look that interesting.
Dave:So it it wasn't something I thought I could mine for ideas for other things either.
Matthew:But there's I think there's a really interesting thing about what a character is meant to feel like in Alien. And I feel generally in Alien, your more successful character is a working stiff who is constantly being manipulated and controlled by corporations. You've gotta do these shitty tasks. You don't have the power to nuke somebody from orbit. You know?
Matthew:Yeah. No. People said we should get off the planet and order somebody and and and duke somebody from orbit, but their orders were to be on the planet and actually, you know, get some samples of Weyland Yutani, although they didn't really know that. So Yeah. Once once you've got the power to press the great big missile button on your spaceship, you're not playing an alien character.
Matthew:You're doing something else. And, yeah, it might be something from the comics, but I haven't read the comics. I don't give a fuck for them.
Dave:No. I haven't read them either. No.
Matthew:And I think they're probably wrong to have gone down that avenue.
Dave:They might have been obliged to you as part of the license, perhaps.
Matthew:You know, there is there is, you know come Alien four, Alien Resurrection, which is two hundred years in the future from where we are in the current setting, remember, yes, you do then start having a ship like the Betty, which is, you know, a crew of pirates effectively who are here to do crime. And you might then you know, if if we ever do if Friedrich ever do a Betty supplement or resurrection supplement for Alien, that's where I'd be putting potentially the ship combat rules because you are a little crew with your own little ship which may or may not have weapons. But we'll come to that later on. So that is all a preamble to say that spaceship combat doesn't feature in the stories much except, okay, the comics. And maybe some of the novels.
Matthew:There's a lot of novels written.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:But it doesn't in the core of the stories, it's not part of the fiction. Whereas it is in The Expanse, so it should be there. In Firefly, developing your town is not part of the fiction, as opposed to many, many, many examples in the Wild West genre where it is part of the fiction. So I would just get rid of that town stuff. Now they do go places.
Matthew:So we talk about Haven in in the Serenity movie. We talk about the Eves Down docks in on Persephone in in the first pilot, also called, confusingly, Serenity. But that's really about meeting people, not about meeting not about building a town. And also very much, you're not tied to a particular town. You're, you know, you're you're you are the thing you're tied to is your ship in this game.
Matthew:And I'd be a lot more interested, and we will talk later on, about how developing your ship might have some of the similar sort of mechanics, but not mean by no means the same, as developing your town in Chelsea Old West.
Dave:Yes. So I agree.
Matthew:I've already Since I knew what you were going to argue and I've already
Dave:refuted all those arguments. Earlier. Yeah. No, think I think it's it's a fair point. It's a fair point.
Dave:I mean, I was I was thinking that particularly with like Haven, it's it's the it's the kind of place that they might go back to regularly and And therefore, it might be a place that they would want to try and support and help and encourage and do things that could then develop it. But actually, it's not gonna be a place where they're gonna live particularly. Not gonna be a place where they're going to run a business or an outfit like we do in Tales of the Old West. So actually, you know, we you know, I wasn't suggesting including the outfit rules because that wouldn't really apply to Obi Wael. So yeah, so I think you're right.
Dave:I think I was a bit hasty in putting that down in in that way. I think there's still maybe stuff you can do around it and you know there would definitely be situations where you know, the GM might have a a rich vein of adventures about helping or saving or protecting a particular town, you know, settlement or, you
Matthew:know Oh, absolutely.
Dave:Yeah. Like like a or like the what's it called? I don't remember the name of the episode now. Where they're where they're protecting the the whorehouse
Matthew:Heart from of Gold.
Dave:Heart of Gold. That's the one. So things like that. So these places would have now we're going to talk about compadres in a minute. I think there's a there's a good thing we could do with those.
Dave:But they might have some of these kind of compadres and would be a place of rest and respite and maybe refuel and recharge and other stuff, rather than a place that you would have mechanical rules around about trying to develop it. So, yeah, I agree. I agree with that comment.
Matthew:Yeah. And I think I think you're right. It's about the people. It's not about the place particularly. You know?
Matthew:So Shepard Book, obviously, by the movie, is living in and pretty much running Haven. They're going to see him. They're not necessarily gonna see Haven. Had Nandy lived in sorry. Spoilers.
Matthew:But if you haven't watched Firefly, just get out of this podcast.
Dave:Go and watch it now and then come back.
Matthew:Watch it and then come back. Yeah, had had Mandy lived, then that, you know, there could have been a developing relationship there, which would have been fascinating.
Dave:But then in in a game terms, there could easily be a developing there with the other girls who survive.
Matthew:Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's about that relationship with the Let's talk a bit about the compadres actually. The compadres are also filling a slightly different function.
Matthew:So I think there'd be a similar but different set of rules for compadres in a Firefly game. In our Western game, compadres are often our staff. We leave them to run the ranch when we're off having an adventure. We're not having to run the ranch now. We're all on the boat.
Matthew:I'm less keen on cabard compadres being necessary to run the boat. I'd much prefer the boat being of a size that can be run by the crew. Is to say all the players who are there. So we don't need them hanging around like ghosts on the vessel either. But they do feel an important function off world.
Matthew:Well, not off world, Out of the out on worlds. On worlds. Oh, shit. Yeah. They are rather than places that you go and see, they are people that you go and see, which is very much part of the fiction of of of of Firefly.
Matthew:So I'd like to yeah. We could big up the compadre role and and do a thing where you do maybe invest a bit in, you know, trying to win Badger over, for example. And him becoming a more trustworthy compadre than he might otherwise be as we've seen in the fiction there.
Dave:Then I think the I think the variation would be that these compadres would be you know, they might be less trustworthy. So, you know, Saffron, for example, is a great example of of a character who I could easily
Matthew:have
Dave:seen, you know, coming back in future series, maybe even becoming a member of
Matthew:the Season five should be a series regular.
Dave:Yeah. Precisely. But it might be somebody that you know they could never really always trust. Whereas you know take for example Jane. Jane's Jane's character arc.
Dave:You know, at the start, he really isn't somebody that Mal can trust. But then as he goes through and once they have the the confrontation on the episode of Ariel, which is one of the best scenes in the whole series. You know, you see a different side of Jane. You see a different side. Mal sees a different side of Jane.
Dave:They, you know And over the series, he begins to trust him. So so Jane is less untrustworthy, but actually, maybe you still need a bit of that suspicion and stuff, in which case your compadres can provide you with that.
Matthew:But actually, that that also reminds me of a thing we didn't talk about when we recorded it this morning. Obviously, that's very we can't really use Jane as an example of a compadre because
Dave:I'm just He's
Matthew:not on the ship, and he's a player character. Yeah. But one of the things that you mentioned about player characters, which I think is a brilliant addition to the Toto rule set if we were making a a verse rule set, is is that idea of a secret.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. We didn't mention that this morning, did we? Yeah.
Matthew:No. We didn't mention it this morning. I think it's a great idea. And, actually, the idea that and it's not a secret agenda like, I mean, it kind of might be like a secret agenda, but I'd be really interested in how we might work out the mechanics of having that secret and what it means as a playing character.
Dave:But I think Go on.
Matthew:There there would be. There would be a, you know, a a secret about I mean, he didn't make it terribly secret because he's he's not a very sophisticated guy, is he, Jane? But, you know, he he his secret is, broadly speaking, he wants to well, as I told you, I think, when I was recommending Firefly to you, he's John Lerner. He's always wanted to take over the shift.
Dave:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew:And so, you know, there could be a thing about how, you know, when the secret comes out, if you like, like that, or, you know, his secret is he really wants everybody to love him and respect him even though he knows that he's a git. There's that that thing you said about trauma and secrets, I think, would be a lovely, lovely thing to add into
Dave:Yeah. Your
Matthew:character creation in some way.
Dave:And they don't all have to be, you know, verse shattering secrets, as I said in the piece.
Matthew:No.
Dave:You know, River's secret and Simon's secret are are of that ilk. They but they form the basis of the campaign, pretty much. But everybody else's secret is equally important to them, of course, but is of a different level and different style, and I'd want to reflect that because, you know, I want those secrets to be you know, as we do with a lot of the stuff in tales of the Old West, it's it's the objective of much of the rules is to provoke story ideas and give the GM lots of hooks to create great adventures. And that is what these secrets will be there for, you know? Exactly.
Dave:The players would would would want to, I mean, either hide them or develop them or get rid of them or whatever. But then the GM can take that and and run with that secret and and make make great games from it.
Matthew:Yeah. And, you know, and and and and maybe it doesn't happen. So if if we if we take the television media, we never discovered Shepherd Book secret.
Dave:No. But we knew but we knew he had one.
Matthew:But we definitely knew he had one. He wasn't born a shepherd. No. Exactly. He's not a shepherd.
Matthew:And also, you know, interestingly, in the the fandom, everybody's pretty much convinced now that Inara's secret was that she was dying
Dave:Okay. Yeah.
Matthew:Of of something unspecified. And that was one of the reasons why she never wanted to commit to
Dave:To Mal.
Matthew:To Mal in any sort of way. But, you know, those are two secrets there that never actually came out. But you could see them in play. You could imagine that, for example, Shepard Bookbite say, Okay, I'm just going to roll on my secret, Mr GM. What do I know about NISCO?
Matthew:Or, What do I know about this weapon? And these sorts of wounds. And that would be a fun mechanic that we could actually turn your secret to sub advantage. But it didn't ever come out within the drama. It came out in a crappy comic.
Matthew:And it's one of the reasons why I think stuff written in comics shouldn't necessarily be considered Be part
Dave:of the canon.
Matthew:Yeah. One of the most disappointing Firefly comics I ever read, that was. Lots of people love it, but it's pandering to the fandom and it doesn't it doesn't show that the book was actually a, shall we say, an enhanced interrogation officer, which is what my my feeling of his secret is. Right. Yeah.
Matthew:That he was a torturer for the alliance at some point. Yeah. Possibly working with Niska in that function as well. But we shall never know. We shall never know.
Matthew:And that's good.
Dave:Yeah. Well, you know, sadly on the one hand, but good on the other. Good at this point. Sad that we didn't didn't get a second season, but good at this distance from it that we don't know. Yeah.
Matthew:But you can see that, you know, in campaign play, that might come out at some point, you know.
Dave:Yeah. Absolutely.
Matthew:Somebody who, if that was, you know, your I I actually role played this. I don't think about this. I did an online sort of play by post role playing game of the Serenity role playing game where I kind of took the shepherd book role with my second character because my first had to go off and do something else. So my character was called Seibei, which I think is Chinese mercy or something. And he was a Taoist monk, but he had been that enhanced interrogation officer.
Matthew:And Right. At some point well, in fact, the final the final yeah. Everybody took a turn at GM ing. And so my last go at GM ing, I had that character kidnapped. And he'd been kidnapped by a bunch of people who were getting their revenge on him.
Dave:Because For him torturing him.
Matthew:They knew he was a torturer. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, secrets.
Matthew:That's the thing that we didn't talk about before. That's new. Top quality discussion that we've had here that I love. The other discussion that I we had, which I sort of take issue with, is weapons. Now you were saying, actually, the thing that I I don't think we need as much detail in weapons as we've put into Tales of the Old West for Firefly.
Matthew:But you can come back at me at that one.
Dave:Yeah, so I mean, I think the rules that we have for weapons in Tales of the Old West are actually quite simple as it stands. I think the because we talked about, you know, I talked about that I would keep the the action of the weapons because you do see you do see characters cocking their gun in in Firefly and Serenity. We had a little debate earlier about you said, oh, go and tell me one time. And then I went and told you one time straight away, which was the moment in Serenity when Mal has broken onto the bridge because River has has sealed herself in because she's trying to find Miranda on this on on the on the computer. And she holds the gun up at him, and he says, now I've we've we've gambled, you know, know, know, gambled our lives on you being whole and true person.
Dave:And if you're not, you might as well just shoot me now. And she cocks the gun, and he goes, or we could talk some more.
Matthew:Yeah. Now you see, I'm going, that's dramatic effect.
Dave:It is. But then in in in a western movie, it's dramatic effect.
Matthew:You know? I but I think in in in the West where we do have this,
Dave:you know, kind of introduction of the double. Morning, haven't you? No. No. No.
Dave:You didn't really screw up the recording. You just thought, right. I'm gonna get in for some of these comments he's made. No.
Matthew:So I I I I think, actually, I'm gonna disagree with you that we haven't made combat complex. I think we have really pushed at the year zero engine, making gun combat. I think I think to make it any more complex than we've we've made it, which is alright. I'm I'm not criticizing the complexity of our game. It fits entirely in the genre, but we have pushed at the complexity of this.
Matthew:It isn't the complexity of Phoenix Command, the
Dave:the game. But nothing is but Phoenix Command.
Matthew:But but
Dave:but okay. I mean, we'll have to agree to disagree there because I I don't think it's very complicated. It's not a it's not a complex set of rules. Have we have adjust we have adjusted Have
Matthew:you looked in our stream on the on the year zero world's Discord?
Dave:No.
Matthew:Well, take a look at that first.
Dave:Well, well, because some people think it's complicated.
Matthew:People some people think there's there's no fun advantage, shall we say, to the complexity of single and double action.
Dave:Okay. Well, they're they're they're welcome to their wrong opinions.
Matthew:Yeah. I I agree with you. I'm in But I think for Firefly, we don't need it. Even if people do got their gun.
Dave:Yeah. I mean, maybe. I say I'm I'm I'm not a 100% wedded to having to keep it. I'm happy to have a have a discussion about it. But I think the thing that I really didn't want to introduce was was some complex rules for burst fire and auto fire for weapons capable of doing that.
Dave:Because again, they just become way too powerful. And Firefly isn't a an IP that is all about firing off a lot of guns all
Matthew:the time. Yes.
Dave:There there are scenes where they do have some gunfights. And and, you know, we're talking about the war stories episode where they're rescuing Mal from Nishka's clutches. And and Jane is there with with Vera. And they're firing quite a lot of bullets. But it's not like a World War Two kind of combat thing where you are got machine guns pounding bullets down the whole time.
Dave:And I don't and I don't want I don't want that vibe. I or I don't want the players to be able to do that because you will get some who will always do that.
Matthew:And I think, you a a symptom of that in a lot of the Year Zero games is because of the or rather a cause of that symptom, I should say, a lot of the year zero games, is because they've tried to put that bit of a complexity onto a very simple gun system, and it's not nuanced enough to to really, you know, if you like, give you a distinct disadvantage to the to the advantages you get for AutoFire and stuff like that. Yeah. So they haven't, you know, they've they've they've added the wrong complexity here. We did a thing actually, I think, you know, I'm thinking back to the discussion that we had or that we didn't have that we watched on Dungeons and Dyslexia where they said, why do all these guns have negative modifiers? Yeah.
Matthew:And part of the reason we did negative and positive modifiers on the various weapons is to be able to differentiate them. So to make the sort of gun that you have as being significant.
Dave:But it's important. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Because that is important in the fiction of the Old West. It's less important. That that difference, I I would argue, is less important in the fiction of Serenity or Firefly. You shoot somebody with Kayleigh's dog leg, you know, effectively shotgun or Mal's pistol.
Matthew:They're both good shots. People go down. There's there's very little difference in in the effect of those two very different guns within the world of Firefly. And I think, you know, the interesting stuff is where Mal always uses that weapon. So I think there's instead of the complexity, we've got a guns.
Matthew:We can have any old guns. They're broadly speaking to broadly the same amount of damage and stuff like that. When you make a gun your signature weapon like Mal's pistol is, then you get a bit of a bonus. Or when you name your gun, then you get a bit of a bonus. If your gun's called Vera, then that I talked about, you know, maybe this is one of our two level talents.
Matthew:The the first level of your signature weapon is a bit of a bonus just for always using that gun. And the second level is when you've named your gun, then you get
Dave:a punch. Yeah. That gun, you've had that gun long enough, it's earned a name. Yeah. It's earned a sentimental place in your armoury or in your heart.
Matthew:Yeah. I think many bonuses about, you know, it doesn't go wrong when you have to push your dice or stuff like that. Yeah. We could we could we could shop this no problem at all. Yeah.
Matthew:And
Dave:I like that. I like that idea because I think also we might be able to encompass things like some basic some basic mechanics around burst fire in that kind of way. You've got you've got Vera and you know, it's got the quality of you know, high rate of fire or whatever you want to call it. But that doesn't mean you roll like 55,000,000,000 dice and do 10,000,000,000 damage. It's a little bit more abstracted than that and maybe actually.
Dave:Yeah. You do the shot as normal, but because you're doing a weapon like that, it also damages, it's kind of suppressing so any damage you do to grit and quick is also applied to cunning and dossity perhaps?
Matthew:Yes, so I've always felt and in fact I feel there may be rules that I invent Gold Coast, Gold Country that we're working on. I'd like to put some suppressive fire rules in that exactly do that, that do damage
Dave:That basically to your scare people rather than actually shoot them. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. No. So we'll we'll talk about that out of this this scenario. But I think you're right.
Matthew:One of the issues, though, that we talked about is when you've got that advantage, that signature weapon, as a player, you'd be inclined to use it all the time, And that isn't what your man, Jane, does. He's got a whole wall of weapons. He brings out Veera.
Dave:He's excited about
Matthew:that two or three times.
Dave:Yeah. Yes. We
Matthew:also talked about that having a It's quality of
Dave:it's it's three times.
Matthew:It's twice.
Dave:Well, it's it's twice in
Matthew:the The same first time he brings it out three times. Then that's foreshadowing when he uses it to shoot the net.
Dave:He brings it out to offer it to to Mal in return for being given saffron. One, they use it to shoot the the the ship that's gonna wreck them. Two, and then he uses it on the on the attack on Nishka's space station 3.
Matthew:He uses it twice. He's
Dave:using it as a gift in the first instance.
Matthew:He's not really giving it. He's baking it off. Yeah. Takes it. Anyway.
Matthew:Anyway. That's just a little taste of the argument we had in the previous recording that we don't need to go over again.
Dave:That's quite entertaining.
Matthew:But we did talk, actually one good thing that came out of that was, that is a weapon that may have a quality like something like military technology.
Dave:A weapon of war or something you said before. Should
Matthew:Weapon of war sounds great. Which then is a thing that has an advantage, obviously, in the number of dice you roll when, you know, when you're shooting somebody with it. But it also has a disadvantage in how people react to you or whether you can carry it around in some So odd I think that would be a great way of dealing with that. And you know what? It's making me think that you're right about that bursting.
Matthew:A simple mechanic might simply be, okay, yeah, you get to roll more dice, but you roll them once. And if you get depending on the number of successes you get, you can split them between different people, different targets. That may be the way to do burst.
Dave:Possibly. Yeah.
Matthew:Yeah. Did we discuss anything else?
Dave:We we you mentioned missions and jobs. Oh yeah, so We'd need to include a mission and job generator or ability to help the GM come up with those things, which I think is entirely in keeping with our philosophy of these kind of games of giving the GM plenty of tools to create good adventures.
Matthew:So that's
Dave:something that we should definitely do for this, I agree. It's something that should be quite straightforward hopefully do Yes. Quite
Matthew:then we had a big discussion about money, didn't we Dave?
Dave:We did have a discussion about money. I mean we're on fifty nine minutes already. How did we get there? This is going be longer than the number
Matthew:And for this
Dave:we were going to keep it short. But yeah. So the the the basic thrust of the the the money discussion was you are you are one of those players that doesn't particularly enjoy the
Matthew:Accountancy in space.
Dave:The the book the bookkeeping of of some games. Whereas I am, and I am a player that enjoys that. I don't mind that at all. And I use the example of the Coriolis campaigns I've been running, the Spectral Corsair campaign, and then the Reborn Spectral Corsair campaign that's just started where my players love all of that. And we had a we had a discussion about whether, you know, what system we should try and use.
Dave:And I and I and I I think the the I think that the final the the final conclusion that I certainly reached was that the the the thing that I enjoy and the thing that the players enjoy when it comes to doing a bit of that counting the money is having a feeling of, you know, being well rewarded for a job well done. And you can say, wow, we got, you know, we had 5,000. We've never got 10,000. Great. That's, that's really cool.
Dave:But there's definitely a satisfaction to feed there. And I don't mind doing something more abstracted. So we've done we use capital in terms of Old West, and that works very well for the purpose that we're using it for. So I don't mind abstracting, as long as in that abstraction, satisfying that satisfaction is being fed. So I think
Matthew:that See, might argue, and this is a slightly different argument than the one I made before, but I might argue
Dave:You can't change your argument between now and this morning, mate.
Matthew:I can. I can. This is a whole new recording. You've you've worded that really well. But I might argue that even though Mal frequently says we do the job, we get paid, which is fine.
Matthew:Very often they are not well rewarded for the job. A very fine job
Dave:they did. Is true.
Matthew:Brings them no reward. So so I think part of the story is not getting well rewarded for a job well done. And, yeah, and I you know, and all we generally see we never see him say, you know, it's it's 2,000 platinum for either for the job you you want us to do, be it, you know, getting cows off planet to smuggle as Yeah.
Dave:Whatever the job
Matthew:Yeah. Might Even for getting the spare parts you need. It's never mentioned when money is shown, it's shown in a bag and it is considered to be either enough money or not enough money. That is the level of abstraction I'd like to see. I don't mind getting rewarded for a job well done.
Matthew:Although, you know, with the previous caveat that you have to accept not getting rewarded.
Dave:Yeah. No. I think I think my comment is very relative though because I wasn't meaning getting rewarded with like a golden mansion or whatever. It's like you've received something for the job that you've done and, you know, you have a satisfaction in getting that reward, and it's enough to feed the crew this week and refuel the ship and repair that buffer panel that fell off.
Matthew:But I think one of the problems with science fiction games, though, is very often they can a canny a canny accountant on the player side can go, alright. We can soon afford a big golden mansion. I mean, whether they buy a big golden mansion or not is another thing. And so then you get the GM going, right. I don't want to be that rich.
Matthew:More is gonna go wrong with their ship, and it's gonna be more expensive to repair. And it starts to become a kind of adversarial accounting in the space, which is the worst thing in the world. Okay.
Dave:Well, that's that's the GM's fault then, though, isn't it? I mean, the GM shouldn't have over rewarded them in the first place, if that's the case.
Matthew:But but this isn't a game about having golden mansions, is it? It's a game about just just just struggling.
Dave:It is. It is. But there but there is a key thing there in that you are doing just enough or getting rewarded just enough to keep your head above water. That's then
Matthew:that's If I give you a bag of money and say this is just enough to keep your head above water, you ought to be satisfied by that. But now you'll come back and say, I want two of those bags of money for this trip. As
Dave:as as as any any any player probably would. You know?
Matthew:So how do we abstract success? I don't want to deprive you of the success in No. In Cunningham, neither do I want to say, oh, well, that's two bags of money.
Dave:No. But I think what we what we can't do is resolve it here on the podcast. What we can do is flag the fact that this is an interesting issue that is going to require a bit of creative effort to try and resolve. And it's it's something that is actually quite good fun to try and do as well. It's an interesting conundrum in game mechanics terms.
Dave:But but, know, again, know, that's another line from Carmen Boych episode. But when they're talking to Badger, and Badger's saying, yeah, the the situation's changed. The situation's fluid and Jane says the only fluid I see here is the puddle of piss who ain't paying us our wages. But yeah.
Matthew:There you go, there's a fine example of them not getting paid for a job quite well done.
Dave:Exactly, yeah yeah which is fine and that's that's a trope of fireflies isn't it? Yeah. Everyone is trying to screw everybody else over.
Matthew:So we also talked and here we are in, I think in agreement about what we want for developing your ship stroke home. Yeah. And I think we both we both just clarified that we're not expecting massive ship combat fights here. You're not meant to be buying yourself a new missile launcher to bolt onto the underside of Serenity. We did have a bit of a discussion about the gun that they nick off
Dave:Of Hateful Hateful Hateful.
Matthew:And in fact, that does. Both that and the example we spoke of before where where Jane goes out the front with Vera, that sort of space combat is exactly the sort of space combat that occasionally we might want in this game. Where somebody has to do the crew has to do something extraordinary involving a whole bunch of crew Yeah. To do a thing Yeah. To to deal with whatever the threat is.
Matthew:But it's not a trading blows in broadsides sort
Dave:of And and and having and having, like, dogfights in space. No. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think, you know, what you need to what what most sci fi films films what a lot of sci fi doesn't challenge is the kind of accepted idea that when you're flying around in your your your freighter or whatever, you've got a load of guns on that ship to do what you what you want with. And it's a bit like it's a bit like, you know, someone being a a truck driver going from, you know, Scotland to Plymouth with Yes.
Matthew:A bunch
Dave:of guns on the front of his truck. You know, there's there's generally no need for it. You know, you've got the police, you've got the military. And, you know, in the Firefly universe, I guess you've got the alliance. And okay, on the frontier, can get away with a lot more, but there's still the old alliance patrol.
Dave:And if your ship gets run down by, you know, by an alliance cruiser and you're packing lots and lots of military style weapons, that's probably going to be highly illegal. A bit like if you're if you're driving down the M six in your 18 wheeler and you've got a machine gun on the front of your your truck, you're likely to get stopped by the police and be told you can't do that.
Matthew:Even in America where they're quite lax on their gun laws, you don't see the guns the the trucks there with with machine guns on the front bonnet, do you?
Dave:No. Exactly.
Matthew:Good. Good. So I I
Dave:I think if we take that kind of that kind of principle, then actually, you know, Serenity having that itty bitty gun on it when it flew into Reefer space was probably an illegal thing to do.
Matthew:And they took it off afterwards.
Dave:And the fact they were going through Reaver space and all the rest of it, I guess, know, it it was less of an issue for them. But yeah, then you say there's a scene at the end where they're fixing up Serenity and they're unhitching the gun from the top. Yeah. Yeah. So I think
Matthew:Okay. So how do we so if we've rules for developing our ship, how are we developing our ship?
Dave:So I think we we kind of discussed before again what what what we don't
Matthew:want I know we discussed it before. I'm giving you the opportunity.
Dave:We've we've we've run an hour and eight minutes now, mate. We were gonna finish this half an hour ago. I've got football to watch and a sofa to sit on. Bloody hell.
Matthew:Yeah. Well, I've got a bloody episode to edit. I might have edited all the rest of it.
Dave:That's true. That's true. Yeah. You've got the worst end of this this stick. That's true.
Dave:Yeah. So I think what we what we what we're not going what we're not saying is, you know, a bit like you get in Coriolis, which is fine. I enjoy it. But you're not getting a long list of things that you can buy, including, you know, antimatter missiles and all that kind of stuff, you are you're enhancing your ship as a place to live. You're enhancing your ship as a as a location, as a as a home.
Dave:Now, some of that might come with some upgrades. It might for a while come with, you know, an itty bitty cannon on top. But it's not you know, we we don't want to be giving the players the the the space or the opportunity to go shopping and just slap on lots of armor, lots of missiles, lots of all this, that and the other. Because that isn't Firefly. That's not the ship they're flying.
Matthew:Yeah. So I think, you know, for example, we talked about things like Kayleigh. I'm sure it was Kayleigh. We we don't know who it was, but I'm pretty sure it was Kayleigh painting flowers on the bulkheads around the
Dave:Seems likely it was Kayleigh.
Matthew:The galley image. Yeah. And you say so, you know, there's a thing there where in mechanical game terms, maybe that's a thing that says, you know, you've always got food on the ship. Once you've done this modification, there's always at least protein to eat on the ship. It may not be, it may be chocolate flavored protein.
Matthew:Yeah. But, you know, there's something there. Or, you know, even the fact that Shepard Book brings with him all the fresh produce that he brings with him from the South Down Abbey. So there's a meal there that, you know, gives people more faith points or whatever when you all sit round a table. Or you build.
Matthew:You build that long table with all those mismatched chairs. Once you've got that in your ship, that means that you do all get extra faith points when you all sit down and have a meal.
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:But you know, and we've got those faith recovery tropes already in our Western game and can actually make the mechanical
Dave:play perfectly well.
Matthew:Yeah, Exactly. But then, you know, you might whereas you get a faith point if you sit down and have a meal with friends. Maybe if you sit down in your enhanced galley on on your Firefly that you, you know, you spent some ship development points or whatever we call them on, then actually you get two points, everybody gets two points of faith when they sit down at
Dave:a Yeah, meal or absolutely. And you know,
Matthew:there could be other things like, you know, smuggling holes and things like that could also be part of that, I guess.
Dave:Yeah I think you know as I said you know the ship needs to do what the players want it to do but in Firefly you're not playing a crew of you know, a battleship. You are playing the crew of a commercial vessel of some sort. Yeah. And, yeah, you might have a some defensive stuff on there. You might have some chaff or some ECM or something, but you're not gonna be you're not you know, because that would make sense, perhaps.
Dave:But you're not going to have big powerful military weapons.
Matthew:Crybaby, for example, made out of old tins of blue sun coffee or whatever. That may be an enhancement you made for your ship and then, you know, you Yeah. Use
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:Right. We are in agreement. We need now is for somebody to give us the license for Firefly Serenity.
Dave:We need to go hunting, don't we?
Matthew:Yeah. Yeah. But maybe that's not gonna come. But there's just one final thing I wanted to finish on, and this isn't my idea, but it's an idea I love so much. I and purely coincidental.
Matthew:Jonathan Kicks Jonathan Hicks of Those Dark Spaces and of Of Course. And now
Dave:now Raptic Protocol. Yeah.
Matthew:Saying how much he enjoyed Firefly, but it also made him yearn for a series where the Firefly crew were in the actual Old West running a riverboat. And I thought that's a brilliant, brilliant subject for an adventure. We should do that. Particularly maybe after we've done gold country, because you could do a riverboat in the 1850s being part of the underground railroad, possibly for escaped slaves. And you can have a crew on there, including a captain Malcolm Reynolds and stuff like that, that everybody recognizes, oh, yeah.
Matthew:I know. I know where you got this this ship called Firefly from. Whatever. Yeah. Obviously, you know, not not so obvious, but but in the note, an homage
Dave:Yeah.
Matthew:As opposed to stealing. I'd love to do Or that even we should try and find John Jonathan when we're at Dragon Meat and get him to write it and publish it under our Made in the Old West.
Dave:Yeah. That's a good idea.
Matthew:The very least.
Dave:It's a good idea.
Matthew:Right. Now
Dave:Right. Our our second episode today has been longer than the first.
Matthew:Yes.
Dave:I'm not sure we covered everything that we spoke about this morning, but I think that's probably it for this time. Next time, there are some issues because you've got
Matthew:very Yes. So next time there may be a delay. We're at Dragon Meet next weekend, then I'm in Rome the weekend after that, then we're all of us not you, dear listener, but you, Dave, and and me, and our chums, we're playing role playing games in our annual gaming retreat.
Dave:We are.
Matthew:So that's three weekends where we're not gonna be around to record. There will at some point be some sort of dragon meat report, I'm sure. But when? Who can tell? Hopefully, Christmas.
Dave:Yeah. I'm sure we can get it before Christmas. And it might be that we can record quite a lot of Dragon meat, actually, and then have something that's easy easier, ready to go, perhaps. So bring your recording equipment, mate.
Matthew:Yes. Cool. It's goodbye from me.
Dave:And it's goodbye from him.
Matthew:And may the icons bless your adventures.